. and abroad. The death of his wife in 1847 was a major trauma to Poe, from which he never really recovered. He died in Baltimore in 1849, at the age of only 40.

Poe makes us understand that the murderer has no qualms with his action because he has been tortured by the nightmarish terrors he attributes to his victim, or in the case of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the victims eye. The narrator states that one of the old man’s eyes was a pale blue color with a film over it, which resembled the eye of a vulture. Just the sight of the “evil eye” made the narrator’s blood run cold; therefore he reasoned that, the eye (and with it the old man) must be destroyed. Through the narration of this story, Poe shows how the narrator has driven himself insane, how he is the victim of his own self-torturing obsessions. The narrator had been hearing deathwatches in the wall. A deathwatch is a type of beetle that makes a tapping sound. The narrator interprets this noise mistakenly, as the beating of the old man’s heart. After he has murdered the old man, he keeps hearing the deathwatches and thinking that the old man’s heart is still somehow beating. The sound becomes louder and louder until the narrator’s self control is totally lost, and he finally unveils the dead body to the police.

“The disease has sharpened his senses—not destroyed—not dulled them… How then am I mad?�

Some topics in this essay:
Tell-Tale Heart”, TS Eliot, Literary Messenger, Allans Poe, Edgar Poe’s, Symons Father, Boston January, Virginia February, Clemm Meanwhile, Clemm Baltimore, tell-tale heart”, “the tell-tale, “the tell-tale heart”, poe reader, man’s heart, obsessions narrator, short stories, hearing deathwatches,